In Hesiod'sTheogony, Phaëton becomes a
daimon, de-materialized,[2] but the
ills of mankind released by Pandora are keres not
daimones. Hesiod relates how the men of the Golden Age
were transmuted into daimones by the will of Zeus, to
serve as ineffable guardians of mortals, whom they might serve by
their benevolence.[3] In
similar ways, the daimon of a venerated hero
or a founder figure, located in one place by the construction of a
shrine rather than left unburied to wander, would confer good
fortune and protection on those who stopped to offer respect.
Daemones were not considered evil. The term also referred to the
souls of men of the golden age acting as guardian deities.[4]

The daemon as a lesser spiritual being of dangerous,
even evil character, an invisible numinous presence, was developed by Plato and his pupil Xenocrates,[5] and
absorbed in Christian patristic writings along with other neo-Platonic elements. In the Old
Testament, evil spirits appear in the book of Judges and Kings. In
the Greek translation of the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews
of Alexandria, the Greek angelos translates mal'ak, while daimon
(or neuter daimonion) carries the meaning of a natural
spirit that is less than divine and translates Hebrew words for idols, alien gods of the
Hebrews' neighbors, some hostile natural creatures, and natural
evils.[6] The
usage of daimon in the New Testament's original Greek text,
caused the Greek word to be applied to the Judeo-Christian concept
of an evil spirit by the early 2nd century AD.

In classical and
Hellenistic philosophy

Though in Homer the words θεοί (gods) and
δαίμονες (divinities) were practically
synonymous, later writers like Plato developed a distinction
between the two.[7] Plato
in Cratylus (398 b) gives the
etymology of δαίμονες (daimones) from
δαήμονες (daēmones) (=knowing or wise), though in
fact the root of the word is more probably daiō (=to
distribute destinies).[8] In
Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima
teaches Socrates that love is not a god, but rather a "great
daemon" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daemonic is
between divine and mortal" (202d-e), and she describes daemons as
"interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine
things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances
and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of
Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion
(literally, a "divine something")[9] that
frequently warned him - in the form of a "voice" - against mistakes
but never told him what to do.[10]
However, the Platonic Socrates never refers to the
daimonion as a daimōn; it was always an
impersonal "something" or "sign".[11]

The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into
good and evil categories: Eudaemons (also called Kalodaemons)
and Kakodaemons,
respectively. Eudaemons resembled the Abrahamic
idea of the guardian angel or
Higher Self in psychology; they watched over mortals to help keep
them out of trouble. (Thus eudaemonia, originally the state of
having a eudaemon, came to mean "well-being" or "happiness".) A
comparable Roman genius accompanied a person or
protected and haunted a place (genius loci).

The notion of the daemon as a spiritual being of a lowly order
that is largely evil and certainly dangerous has its origin in Plato and his pupil Xenocrates;[12] when
the later connotation is read back anachronistically into Homer,
the result is distorting:[13] "To
emancipate oneself from Plato's manner of speech is no easy
matter", Walter
Burkert remarked.[14]
Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek
art: like keres their
felt but unseen presence was assumed. There was one exception: the
"Good Daemon" Agathos Daemon, who was honored first
with a libation in
ceremonial wine-drinking, and especially in the sanctuary of Dionysus, and whose numinous
presence was signaled in iconography by a chthonicserpent.

After the time of Plato, in the Hellenistic ruler-cult that began with Alexander himself, it was not the
ruler but his guiding daemon that was venerated, for in
Hellenistic times, the daimon was external to the man whom
it inspired and guided, who was "possessed" by this motivating
spirit.[15]
Similarly, the first-century Romans began by venerating the genius of Augustus, a
distinction that blurred in time.

In
Neo-Platonic philosophy

Daemons were important in Neo-Platonic philosophy. In
Neoplatonism, a daemon was more like a demigod rather than an evil spirit, as Eros was described as in-between the gods and
humankind. In the Christian reception of Platonism, the eudaemons
were identified with the angels.

Cyprian was debunking the
gods of the pagans as a euhemerist falsehood in his essay On the
Vanity of Idols, but he had this to say of
daemons:

“

They are impure and
wandering spirits, who, after having been steeped in earthly vices,
have departed from their celestial vigour by the contagion of
earth, and do not cease, when ruined themselves, to seek the ruin
of others; and when degraded themselves, to infuse into others the
error of their own degradation. These demons the poets also
acknowledge, and Socrates declared that he was instructed and ruled
at the will of a demon; and thence the Magi have a power either for
mischief or for mockery, of whom, however, the chief Hostanes both
says that the form of the true God cannot be seen, and declares
that true angels stand round about His throne.

These spirits, therefore, are lurking under the statues and
consecrated images: these inspire the breasts of their prophets
with their afflatus,
animate the fibres of the entrails, direct the flights of birds,
rule the lots, give efficiency to oracles, are always mixing up
falsehood with truth, for they are both deceived and they deceive;
they disturb their life, they disquiet their slumbers; their
spirits creeping also into their bodies, secretly terrify their
minds, distort their limbs, break their health, excite diseases to
force them to worship of themselves, so that when glutted with the
steam of the altars and the piles of cattle, they may unloose what
they had bound, and so appear to have effected a cure. The only
remedy from them is when their own mischief ceases.

”

The dæmons are real enough — "the principle is the same, which
misleads and deceives, and with tricks which darken the truth,
leads away a credulous and foolish rabble" — it is relying upon
them that is deceptive. In this way the dæmons passed
easily into Christian "demons."

The North African Apuleius summed up their character in the
On The God of Socrates (2nd century AD): "For, to
encompass them by a definition, dæmones are living beings in kind,
rational creatures in mind, susceptible to emotion in spirit, in
body composed of the ær, everlasting in time. Of these five points
I have listed, the first three are shared with us, the fourth is
their own, the last they have in common with the immortal gods; but
they differ from them in their capacity to suffer" The Hellenic and
Roman gods were increasingly seen as immovable, untouched by human
sorrows and suffering, existing in a perfect heavenly sphere
(compare Epicurus, Lucretius). The
dæmones were earthbound, passion-tormented, and in Late
Antiquity, loremasters were separating them into the noble kinds
and troublemaking kinds. The gnostic followers of Valentinus multiplied the
circles of dæmons and gave them oversight in various areas of
concern to people: oracles, animals, and, interestingly, as "patron
dæmons" of nations or occupations (compare Principalities and Patron saint).

Early
Christianity

The lore of Hermes Trismegistus is a source
both for pagan and Christian conceptions of dæmons, for in the
Corpus Hermeticum, they functioned as
the gatekeepers of the spheres through which souls passed on their
way to the highest heaven, the Empyrean.

The Early Medieval St. Gallsacramentary
testifies to the continuity of this belief of such angelic spirits
in the oldest extant prayer for anointing the dying:

"I anoint you with sanctified oil that in the manner of a
warrior prepared through anointing for battle you will be able to
prevail over the aery hordes." [16]

The passage to the other world was seen as a migratio
through the realm infested with the demons of the upper air.

The words daemon, dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greekδαίμων (daimôn),[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans.[2]

In Hesiod'sTheogony, Phaëton becomes a daimon, de-materialized,[3] but the ills of mankind released by Pandora are keres not daimones. Hesiod relates how the men of the Golden Age were transmuted into daimones by the will of Zeus, to serve as ineffable guardians of mortals, whom they might serve by their benevolence.[4] In similar ways, the daimon of a venerated hero or a founder figure, located in one place by the construction of a shrine rather than left unburied to wander, would confer good fortune and protection on those who stopped to offer respect. Daemones were not considered evil.

The daemon as a lesser spiritual being of dangerous, even evil character, an invisible numinous presence, was developed by Plato and his pupil Xenocrates,[5] and absorbed in Christian patristic writings along with other neo-Platonic elements. The Greek translation of the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, and the usage of daimon in the New Testament's original Greek text, caused the Greek word to be applied to the Judeo-Christian concept of an evil spirit by the early 2nd century AD.

Contents

In classical and Hellenistic philosophy

Though in Homer the words θεοί (gods) and δαίμονες (divinities) were practically synonymous, later writers like Plato developed a distinction between the two.[6] Plato in Cratylus (398 b) gives the etymology of δαίμονες (daimones) from δαήμονες (daēmones) (=knowing or wise), though in fact the root of the word is more probably daiō (=to distribute destinies).[7] In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a god, but rather a "great daemon" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daemonic is between divine and mortal" (202d-e), and she describes daemons as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a "divine something")[8] that frequently warned him - in the form of a "voice" - against mistakes but never told him what to do.[9] However, the Platonic Socrates never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn; it was always an impersonal "something" or "sign".[10]

The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: Eudaemons (also called Kalodaemons) and Kakodaemons, respectively. Eudaemons resembled the Abrahamic idea of the guardian angel; they watched over mortals to help keep them out of trouble. (Thus eudaemonia, originally the state of having a eudaemon, came to mean "well-being" or "happiness".) A comparable Roman genius accompanied a person or protected and haunted a place (genius loci).

The notion of the daemon as a spiritual being of a lowly order that is largely evil and certainly dangerous has its origin in Plato and his pupil Xenocrates;[11] when the later connotation is read back anachronistically into Homer, the result is distorting:[12] "To emancipate oneself from Plato's manner of speech is no easy matter", Walter Burkert remarked.[13] Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art: like keres their felt but unseen presence was assumed. There was one exception: the "Good Daemon" Agathos Daemon, who was honored first with a libation in ceremonial wine-drinking, and especially in the sanctuary of Dionysus, and whose numinous presence was signaled in iconography by a chthonicserpent.

After the time of Plato, in the Hellenistic ruler-cult that began with Alexander himself, it was not the ruler but his guiding daemon that was venerated, for in Hellenistic times, the daimon was external to the man whom it inspired and guided, who was "possessed" by this motivating spirit.[14] Similarly, the first-century Romans began by venerating the genius of Augustus, a distinction that blurred in time.

In Neo-Platonic philosophy

Daemons were important in Neo-Platonic philosophy. In Neoplatonism, a daemon was more like a demigod rather than an evil spirit, as Eros was described as in-between the gods and humankind. In the Christian reception of Platonism, the eudaemons were identified with the angels.

Cyprian was debunking the gods of the pagans as a euhemerist falsehood in his essay On the Vanity of Idols, but he had this to say of daemons:

“

They are impure and wandering spirits, who, after having been steeped in earthly vices, have departed from their celestial vigour by the contagion of earth, and do not cease, when ruined themselves, to seek the ruin of others; and when degraded themselves, to infuse into others the error of their own degradation. These demons the poets also acknowledge, and Socrates declared that he was instructed and ruled at the will of a demon; and thence the Magi have a power either for mischief or for mockery, of whom, however, the chief Hostanes both says that the form of the true God cannot be seen, and declares that true angels stand round about His throne.

These spirits, therefore, are lurking under the statues and consecrated images: these inspire the breasts of their prophets with their afflatus, animate the fibres of the entrails, direct the flights of birds, rule the lots, give efficiency to oracles, are always mixing up falsehood with truth, for they are both deceived and they deceive; they disturb their life, they disquiet their slumbers; their spirits creeping also into their bodies, secretly terrify their minds, distort their limbs, break their health, excite diseases to force them to worship of themselves, so that when glutted with the steam of the altars and the piles of cattle, they may unloose what they had bound, and so appear to have effected a cure. The only remedy from them is when their own mischief ceases.

”

The dæmons are real enough — "the principle is the same, which misleads and deceives, and with tricks which darken the truth, leads away a credulous and foolish rabble" — it is relying upon them that is deceptive. In this way the dæmons passed easily into Christian "demons."

In North Africa

The North African Apuleius summed up their character in the On The God of Socrates (2nd century AD): "For, to encompass them by a definition, dæmones are living beings in kind, rational creatures in mind, susceptible to emotion in spirit, in body composed of the ær, everlasting in time. Of these five points I have listed, the first three are shared with us, the fourth is their own, the last they have in common with the immortal gods; but they differ from them in their capacity to suffer" The Hellenic and Roman gods were increasingly seen as immovable, untouched by human sorrows and suffering, existing in a perfect heavenly sphere (compare Epicurus, Lucretius). The dæmones were earthbound, passion-tormented, and in Late Antiquity, loremasters were separating them into the noble kinds and troublemaking kinds. The gnostic followers of Valentinus multiplied the circles of dæmons and gave them oversight in various areas of concern to people: oracles, animals, and, interestingly, as "patron dæmons" of nations or occupations (compare Principalities and Patron saint).

In Christianity and Hermeticism

The lore of Hermes Trismegistus is a source both for pagan and Christian conceptions of dæmons, for in the Corpus Hermeticum, they functioned as the gatekeepers of the spheres through which souls passed on their way to the highest heaven, the Empyrean. The Early Medieval St. Gallsacramentary testifies to the continuity of this belief of dæmones in the oldest extant prayer for anointing the dying:

"I anoint you with sanctified oil that in the manner of a warrior prepared through anointing for battle you will be able to prevail over the aery hordes."[citation needed]